Alaska Highway - Hanging Our Sign in the Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake [260619]
(Posted 260715) - Our quest for our first full day in the Yukon was to hang the sign we had brought with us in the Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake.
As we were contemplating heading out, it started raining heavily - which transitioned quickly into pea sized hail, followed by boba sized hail. We decided to wait it out.
Luckily the little squall didn't last for too long, and we were on our way shortly. 2.4 km up the road was another Yukon sign that - while still suffering from Sticker Mange Syndrome - looked considerably better than yesterday's Yukon sign, so we stopped for a couple of quick photos by it on our way past.
The little town of Watson Lake was a short 11 km NW of the rest area. We had the Sign Post Forest set as the destination in Google Maps, but as we neared the corner where it sits we saw a large number of RVs parked in what appeared to be a lot behind the area Google was directing us to. Google has steered us wrong before (and recently - she seems to be extra-confused about streets and routes up north) so we decided to go park with the rest of the RVs. The Forest was clearly visible on the far side of the lot, so we figured we were probably in the right place, got out our sign, hammer, and nails, and took a final photo with our sign before entering to find its new home.
We promised in our first blog post that we'd talk a bit more about the sign, and this seems as good a time as any. We had read about the Forest in our research, so knew it'd be best to bring a sign from home if we wanted to be one of the thousands of folks who have left a reverse-souvenir behind as they passed through (there are free materials offered in the Visitor Center to make one if you didn't bring one - but we're guessing those hastily made signs don't last).
. . . and transfer tape was applied . . .
. . . to move the vinyl template from it's backing to the redwood board.
The transfer tape was removed, and ammonium chloride gel was carefully brushed into all the exposed areas of the template, and allowed to dry completely.
When the burning was completed, we decided that some sort of protective layer would be nice as well, to try to prevent (or at least delay) the graying of the wood that always seems to happen to fence boards outside. Our research seemed to indicate that staining it would be our best bet - but we were a bit nervous about doing so, since we didn't want to cover up our meticulous wood burning work. (They make clear stains/sealers, but apparently those don't offer anti-graying protection, since it's the pigments in the colored stain that provide the necessary UV protection.) We finally settled on the lightest color stain we could get from Home Depot, and were happy to see that the wood burning was still quite visible through it.
Now, back to Watson Lake! We had been worried about not being able to find a place to hang our sign, but that ended up being unfounded since it was clear that the good folks at Watson Lake are continuing to put up new posts for signs as the old ones fill up. We figured that "higher up" was better than "lower down" from a durability perspective, and found a row with some not-too-high-up free spaces on some posts - and even managed to borrow a step ladder from a set of folks who were waiting for others in their party to arrive to put up their signs. To make life easier for ourselves on-site, we had pre-drilled holes in our sign for the eventual nails so it didn't take long for Tom to start the nails in their pre-drilled holes, . . .
(Given how much the post rocked each time Tom hit a nail with his hammer, he was glad that we had managed to borrow a free-standing step ladder instead of having to resort to our backup plan of leaning our telescoping ladder against the same post we were trying to nail into.)
With our hanging task completed, we decided to wander a bit to look at some of the other signs in the forest. It would've taken hours (days?) to try to do an organized walk to read every sign on every post, so we just did a quick walk through a couple of rings of the onion-layout forest.
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The Rest Area was fairly quiet, so we managed to sleep in until 9:30 a.m. on Friday morning. After morning routine, Tom spent some time experimenting with the new/used 70-300mm lens to see if he could make it work reliably or not. After some futzing, he thought he finally had it figured out. The 70-140mm range was completely unusable (never could focus, and at times the normally ultra-silent focus motor made a slight grinding sound when attempting to - when it tried at all). The lens seemed to work fine if you zoomed it out to 300mm before turning it on, and never brought it in across the 140mm threshold (or else the mechanism would jam and you would have to turn it off and start over again). Unfortunately, "manual focus" on this lens is still "focus by wire" (just disengaging the camera's auto-focus logic), and therefore still requires the focus motor in the lens to work. So basically we had a 140-300mm lens that had to be babied, but hopefully would get us through the rest of the trip. 🤞
Luckily the little squall didn't last for too long, and we were on our way shortly. 2.4 km up the road was another Yukon sign that - while still suffering from Sticker Mange Syndrome - looked considerably better than yesterday's Yukon sign, so we stopped for a couple of quick photos by it on our way past.
The little town of Watson Lake was a short 11 km NW of the rest area. We had the Sign Post Forest set as the destination in Google Maps, but as we neared the corner where it sits we saw a large number of RVs parked in what appeared to be a lot behind the area Google was directing us to. Google has steered us wrong before (and recently - she seems to be extra-confused about streets and routes up north) so we decided to go park with the rest of the RVs. The Forest was clearly visible on the far side of the lot, so we figured we were probably in the right place, got out our sign, hammer, and nails, and took a final photo with our sign before entering to find its new home.
We promised in our first blog post that we'd talk a bit more about the sign, and this seems as good a time as any. We had read about the Forest in our research, so knew it'd be best to bring a sign from home if we wanted to be one of the thousands of folks who have left a reverse-souvenir behind as they passed through (there are free materials offered in the Visitor Center to make one if you didn't bring one - but we're guessing those hastily made signs don't last).
In making the sign, we wanted to choose a material that struck a good balance between "not being too expensive" (since we were probably never going to see this thing again) and "giving it a fair chance to withstand the elements" (just in case we do have the chance to go back and find it again). For an exterior application like this we figured that redwood would be better than pine, and settled on buying the cheapest redwood fence board we could from Home Depot. The board was a dull gray color when we brought it home, but a quick-ish run with our belt sander revealed a nice tan color underneath with some reddish undertone/veins in it. Both ends had cracks in them so we cut the center portion out to use for our sign.
For durability, we thought that wood burning would stand up better than paint would - and Tom had learned how to do wood burning with ammonium chloride and a heat gun for some previous projects. He started this one by compositing together some text and graphics in his Silhouette Studio software, and then cutting the template onto Cricut Removable Vinyl (a first, failed attempt involved trying to use Oracal 631 Removable Vinyl, but that's a whole 'nother story) on his Cameo. The parts to be "burned" were then weeded out of the template . . .
The template was the carefully peeled off, leaving the dried ammonium chloride portions behind (you need to look really closely at this next photo).
And here's where the "magic" happens. Hitting the ammonium chloride spots on the wood with a heat gun causes a chemical reaction that results in the wood underneath becoming burned/charred. It's fun to watch in real time, and even more fun in time-lapse.
Now, back to Watson Lake! We had been worried about not being able to find a place to hang our sign, but that ended up being unfounded since it was clear that the good folks at Watson Lake are continuing to put up new posts for signs as the old ones fill up. We figured that "higher up" was better than "lower down" from a durability perspective, and found a row with some not-too-high-up free spaces on some posts - and even managed to borrow a step ladder from a set of folks who were waiting for others in their party to arrive to put up their signs. To make life easier for ourselves on-site, we had pre-drilled holes in our sign for the eventual nails so it didn't take long for Tom to start the nails in their pre-drilled holes, . . .
. . . get the sign into position, get it straight (honestly, this - and the photos - probably took the most time), and hammer it into place.
Here's a 6.5x speed snippet of part of our walk, to give you an idea of the magnitude of the number of signs in this place!While we were on our walkabout, we came upon the real entrance to the Sign Post Forest - which ended up being exactly where Google Maps said it would be. There's a pretty good sized parking area up there too, which was completely empty, so we're thinking that a lot of people did what we did (follow the crowd instead of the mapping). We took another selfie in front of the true entrance, which you'll find at the top of this post. By that entrance area was a slightly different sign about the origin and history of the Sign Post Forest.
As we walked, we took note of which signs seemed to weather the best. Metal signs seemed to be the winner on that front (with some metal signs being quite professional looking - even if you discount the ones that were clearly stolen from municipalities) . . .
Some folks clearly made their signs on-the-fly using whatever materials they could spare out of the stuff they were carrying with them.
Snoopy!
The posts in this section of the Forest all looked fairly new, but some of the posts were SO densely scrunched together that you couldn't even get around all sides of them to read the signs any more. We're hoping the section of the Forest we chose for our sign doesn't get "over developed" like this after we leave!
And in case you're ever in Watson Lake and want to try finding our sign, this short video should show you how to find it. 😉
A re-check of iOverlander revealed that the VIC has moved, and the water fill was at the old location and not the new/current one. We went inside and asked where in town we might be able fill our water bottles, and they told us that we were free to use their kitchen for that. We asked about potable water fill for our RV, and they recommended "Tags" across the street for that, where you could dump and fill for $5. Lastly, we asked about boondocking sites in town and were told that we actually could park overnight right where we were currently parked (but were warned not to try parking across the street where iOverlander said to, because that's designated for trucks only).
We returned to the T42 and showered and washed a backlog of "dirty" dishes in the parking lot before heading back to Tags. By this time, unfortunately, it was raining but we topped off our half tank of gas (barely making it over the $100 mark) anyway, . . .
. . . and after checking in at the counter (which was unnecessary . . . as mentioned before, they were pretty loosey goosey and not really keeping track) proceeded to the back to lube our port, refill our fresh water tank, and then dump/flush. Some time during that process, the rain stopped again (being happy to have gotten Tom wet first).
Dinner that night was Walmart sausages and pre-cooked rice for Tom, and quinoa cakes and pre-cooked rice for Christine, with a shared can of mixed veggies. Christine worked on trip planning, while Tom wrote and published blog post #8, for the rest of the night.
. . . followed by wooden signs with dimensional lettering (which came in two "flavors": cut wood letters mounted onto the surface of the sign, and letters routed into the surface of the sign itself; both eventually succumbed to wood decay, with the routed letters maybe having a slightly better longevity margin?). Painted signs all seemed to eventually chip/flake, and inked signs seemed to eventually fade.
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Our plan for the rest of the day was to fill water at the Visitor Information Centre, shower, and the use the free dump station in town (which didn't have rinse water, but was free) to empty our tanks. We walked across the street to the VIC (housed in the Northern Lights Centre) to check out the free potable water fill there - but couldn't find it!
We picked up the T42 and went across the street to "Tags", which ended up being a combination gas station, mini-mart, restaurant, and laundromat. We didn't see a dump/fill anywhere, so we went in to ask. The nice attendant inside confirmed the dump/fill would be $5 - OR free with a fill-up of at least $100 . . . or whatever close to that; you can either fill up first and then dump/fill, or dump/fill first and then fill up (they were very loosey goosey about the whole thing). The dump/fill facilities were in the rear. We went around back to look; there apparently is an entire campground hiding back there, with full hookup sites!
We drove back to the VIC and had lunch in the T42, then started water heating while we went into the VIC to refill our water bottles in their kitchen (they didn't bat an eyelash when we came in with 3 gallon jugs and 4 Thermoflasks), and then watched the movies they had (trying to see the one on the Alaska Highway, but having to watch the others waiting for it to cycle through again). The nice lady at the VIC also shared with us that each VIC in the Yukon has its own free, unique, sticker that you can collect as you visit (although due to budget constraints many of them don't have them out, and you have to ask at the desk for them); so we started collecting Yukon Visitor Center stickers today too, starting with the Watson Lake one.
We returned to the T42 and showered and washed a backlog of "dirty" dishes in the parking lot before heading back to Tags. By this time, unfortunately, it was raining but we topped off our half tank of gas (barely making it over the $100 mark) anyway, . . .
We returned to our old spot behind the Sign Post Forest for the night, but parked facing the opposite direction to get the van pitched the correct direction for sleeping. There was a substantial number of folks already planted here for the evening/night.
Dinner that night was Walmart sausages and pre-cooked rice for Tom, and quinoa cakes and pre-cooked rice for Christine, with a shared can of mixed veggies. Christine worked on trip planning, while Tom wrote and published blog post #8, for the rest of the night.
Bedtime was midnight. Tomorrow would be another travel day.
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